High Fructose corn syrup worse than glucose in proliferating cancer

9 February 2013

At CANCERactive we have repeatedly warned that there are over six studies in the last two years showing that people with higher blood glucose levels develop more cancers and, if they already have cancer, survive less. Cancer cells love glucose.

Now it looks like glucose might come second best to a more modern food High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). HFCS is an inexpensive ingredient added to fizzy drinks, soups, salad dressings and fast food and is 6 times sweeter than sugar obtained from sugar cane.

There have been a number of general research studies on HFCS like one that showed rats fed on it developed poorer memories because HFCS damaged the ability of insulin to operate in the brain cells (UCLA, May 2012). In 2008 HFCS in soft drinks was linked to gout, a form of arthritis, in men (7 Feb 2008 Choi) and it has been linked in other studies to many conditions, from diabetes to heart disease, with one study showing it increased kidney damage and prevented calcium absorption and vitamin D formation in the body.

It is used because it is sweeter than glucose, a standard soft drink may contain up to 12 spoonsful, and the average American consumes 60 pounds a year!

Coca-Cola and Pepsi announced plans to stop using sugar and start using high-fructose corn syrup in their soft drinks on November 6,1984. A combination of glucose and sucrose, HFCS allows sodas to maintain their sweet taste but also have a longer shelf-life. The problem isn’t the corn syrup part, it’s the fructose part, said Kim Dorval a nutritionist. The body can break down the glucose in corn syrup for energy, but with fructose, it does not stimulate insulin or leptin. These hormones combine to tell the body it’s full and whether or not to store fat.

But in 2010 Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues organized a study into pancreatic cancer and found that pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and reproduce.

Apparently,tumour cells that were fed glucose and fructose used those sugars in two different ways. In fact they concluded that cancer cells can readily metabolise fructose to increase proliferation.

Efforts to reduce refined fructose intake or inhibit fructose-mediated actions may disrupt cancer growth, Heaney added. All sugars are clearly not equal. In the research, pancreatic cells exposed to glucose or fructose both thrived, but those on fructose divided much more rapidly leaving the team to conclude that not all sugars were equal and that fructose and glucose metabolism in cancer cells was quite different.